Studies In Umasvati And His Tattvartha Sutra

Author(s): G C Tripathi, Ashokkumar Singh
Publisher: Bhogilal Laherchand Institute of Indology

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The Works of Vācaka Umāsvāti 9 darśana: The results got therefrom armed the subsequent writers with some basic tools for building up the defence of its principal and vital doctrinal positions. The influence of his sūtras and the kārikās can be discerned on many subsequent Jaina writers, irrespective of the sects to which they belonged.27 After reaching the saturation point in epistemological scholasticism as spearheaded by Mallavādi and Samantabhadra and culminated in the writings of Akalankadeva, efforts in a different direction between the last two authors transcended the limits of those intellectual undertakings and entered into the field of pure metaphysics and mysticism. This is first, and indeed tangibly, noticeable in the seventh century, in Pūjyapāda Devanandi's remarkable work, the Samādhitantra, followed within a century by the most notable work produced by the Jainas, the Samaya-prabhṛta of the greatest and the most progressive of all Nirgrantha thinkers, Acārya Padmanandi of the monastic order (anvaya) Kondakunda.28
In retrospect, just as in the ultimate analysis, it becomes visibly clear that the post-āgamic Jaina religion and its thoughtconstructs are deeply indebted to Umāsvāti and his works which had served as a starting point in the forward direction.29 It is now time to work out an evaluatory annotated bibliography of all that has been written on Umāsvāti and his works and dispassionately assess the progress achieved as well as the regress suffered on that front, keeping of course in view the evidence-oriented and critically objective, circumspective, and for that matter nonsectarian attitude as modus operandi as well as the pivotal principle with which no compromise can be permitted or tolerated.30 The historical writings on Jainism, at the hands particularly of the contemporary Jaina writers, has suffered innumerable distorations and is full of falsehoods, fallacies, as well as anachronisms and very faulty chronologies due on the one hand to the ignorance of the methodology of historical investigations and, on the other, to the bias for one, and bias against the other sect, be it overt or concealed and subtle.